The Matchmaker - The Arrax Saga Book 1 Chapter 175

Saphira reached for her hand, squeezing gently. “She can sense that your dragon is hurting. And she wants to help.”

Zafira’s lips parted, her breath catching. Her eyes glistened with something between fear and hope, like she was afraid to believe it, but desperate to.

She didn’t speak, but her grip tightened around Saphira’s fingers.

Saphira shifted on the edge of the bed, fingers still resting against Zafira’s wrist. The air between them held a new charge. Zafira’s eyes were no longer empty; they flickered with something fragile and wary, but her body remained curled inward, as if afraid to take up space.

“I’m going to try and speak to your dragon,” Saphira said, keeping her voice low and steady. “I don’t know how this will go. If at any point you want me to stop, tell me and I will.”

Zafira’s chin lifted a fraction; she nodded once, small and careful. “Okay,” she whispered.

Saphira closed her eyes and breathed slow. *‘Vaelora, how do I reach her?’* she sent inward.

*‘I’ll try to establish a connection,’* Vaelora answered. *‘I’ll open the channel so you can both be heard. Stay centred. Don’t push.’*

Saphira swallowed and nodded to herself. *‘I’m ready.’*

A pull rose from deep behind her ribs, like a string being tugged through bone. Her breath hitched as a warm prickling threaded up her spine.

The sensation unfurled into a spark and then the link slotted into place with a soft, undeniable click. Energy hummed around her like the aftertaste of thunder. Vaelora’s presence filled her mind and then, clear and firm, called one single name.

*‘Ignis.’*

Saphira felt the name like an old bell. She hadn’t known it; dragon names were given only in trust or crisis, and hearing it set her chest stumbling.

A voice snapped back, edged with steel and suspicion. *‘What do you want?’*

*‘We want to talk,’* Vaelora replied, steady.

*‘Then talk,’* Ignis snarled.

Saphira moved forward inside the quiet of their shared mind, shaping her thought gentle as a hand. *‘Why have you cut Zafira off?’*

*‘Why should I tell you?’* Ignis barked, defensive, the words like scales scraping.

*‘Because if we don’t help, you will lose her,’* Vaelora answered, unflinching. *‘And yourself.’*

Saphira felt the stall within Ignis, a coiled reluctance, an ache. The dragon’s defences trembled, then softened in small increments. *‘I don’t trust myself,’* Ignis admitted at last, voice raw and smaller.

*‘Why?’* Saphira asked, leaning into the vulnerability she could feel.

*‘I don’t know,’* Ignis said. *‘One moment we were in sync; the next something else took hold. I wasn’t myself.’*

Saphira pressed for detail. *‘What did it feel like? When did it start?’*

There was a jagged pause. *‘The link was severed, like a rope cut clean. Something else slid into me, trying to steer my jaws, my claws. It wanted me to strike my own. If Zafira hadn’t fought, if her will had broken, I would have killed them.’* Ignis paused, *‘it began at the start of the first battle.’*

Saphira’s breath shuttered. The illusion spell. *‘The witch’s illusion have been a vector. A targeted assault that hijacked your bond.’* she said.

*‘It sounds like a direct attack,’* Vaelora confirmed, her tone low. *‘Not a side-effect. Deliberate.’*

Ignis’s anger turned brittle with fear. *‘If that’s true… how can I trust we won’t be pulled again? How do I risk Zafira, risk the pack?’* The dragon’s words trembled with the memory of teeth bared toward kin.

Saphira’s chest clenched. She let the honesty out, steady. *‘We’ll work to protect you. I’ll search for counterspells, anything to shield you both. But you also need to bond back. Zafira is suffering without you. You leaving her fractured her.’*

*‘I can’t,’* Ignis breathed. *‘I can’t risk it happening again. I can’t risk her.’*

Saphira thought of Zafira. Her voice dropped to a promise. *‘While you’re here, within the pack’s walls, you’ll be kept safe. If anything happens before we find a defence, we’ll separate you until we can protect you. We will not force you into danger. But we need you with her. She needs you.’*

A slow, heat-tinged warmth spread through Saphira’s chest as Vaelora spoke softly to Ignis, *‘You need your other half.’*

Silence, like held breath. Then, quieter than a whispered ember, *‘I know.’*

The connection shifted, something knitted, small and careful, as if two torn edges found the first careful stitches. Saphira opened her eyes. Zafira’s gaze was fixed on her, slick with unshed tears, and for the first time that morning the edges of her mouth trembled toward a shape that might become a smile.

Saphira let out a breath and smiled back, voice tender. “She’s with you again.”

Zafira did not speak. She didn’t need to. Her hand tightened on Saphira’s, and the dampness in her eyes said everything Saphira could not.

Saphira waited until Zafira’s shoulders loosened a fraction, then asked in a voice barely above a whisper, “Are you okay?”

Zafira’s eyes filled without warning, and the tears blurred the pale irises. For a heartbeat Saphira braced for retreat, then Zafira lurched forward and wrapped her arms around Saphira with desperate force, burying her face into Saphira’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she choked, words muffled and raw.

Saphira hugged her back, one hand going to the small of Zafira’s back, the other rubbing slow, patient circles between her shoulder blades. “We’ll figure out why it happened,” she murmured. “We’ll find what did this, and we’ll stop it.” Her voice carried certainty she didn’t always feel, offered like a ledger of promises.

Zafira nodded into her shoulder, breath hitching. The tiny movement settled something in Saphira’s chest.

When Zafira pulled back enough for Saphira to see her face, Saphira smiled gently and said, “I’m training with the dragons this afternoon. You’re welcome to join us. Even if you just watch.”

Zafira blinked, wiping her cheek with a shaky hand. “I’ll think about it,” she said, voice small but threaded with possibility.

Saphira stepped out of Zafira’s room with a question that had been nibbling at the back of her mind pressed forward until she had to face it. The only one who could answer lived inside her head.

*‘How did you know we could reach her?’* she sent inward, careful, almost reverent.

Vaelora’s presence unfurled around the thought like a familiar scent, warm and steady. *‘Instinct,’* the dragon answered, voice low and sure. *‘I don’t know. Only that something inside me said I could. It was right.’*

Saphira let the words settle like stones dropped into water, then asked the only explanation she could think of. *‘We aren’t normal dragons, are we?’*

Silence threaded through the link; Vaelora folded inward and settled at the back of Saphira’s mind like a sentinel, offering no answer.

Too many strange things had stacked up lately, she thought, a suspicion curling slow and sharp. *Vaelora knows the truth about us.* The thought sat with Saphira as she resumed her walk toward the training clearing, *I will get answers from her, just not today.*